Sunday, December 11, 2011

Snap Crackle Pop: UFC 140

WAR Frank Mir!

No time to tap. I love his explosive style of BJJ. In training you're taught to let the other guy tap, but a real fight is different. See here for some technical post-fight comments from Frank. (More MMA and BJJ theory at 2:45 here.)

"Maybe, but if I get my hands on you there's no tapping. I'm tearing your arm off."

In MMA, it's unfair that the striker gets to hit the other guy at full power, but the grappler has to release the hold when the other guy taps. If there was no referee the striker would think very, very hard before mixing it up. [Some guy tries to break my nose or fracture my skull, and I'm supposed to let him tap?!?]

When I was faculty advisor for the Yale jiujitsu club we considered t-shirts with "Snap, Crackle, Pop" on them, but went with something more conservative like "Yale Brazilian Jiujitsu" :-)

Video of Mir's submission. Nogueira is a top grappler and the last 50 seconds shows some very technical BJJ. Mir escapes a guillotine, gets the kimura, and prevents Nog from escaping a couple of times. Reminds me of what Sakuraba did to Renzo, or Kimura to Helio! On closer review, Nog did have plenty of time to tap, but refused to do so -- just like Helio. Another video.

I have a heard time watching the UFC/boxing/hockey fights without thinking about how these guys are fu@*%$# up their brains. I am guessing guys that have been in the game for some time have some form of mild dementia. NYT chronicles the Boogie Man Boogaard: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/sports/hockey/derek-boogaard-a-brain-going-bad.html?pagewanted=all

I don't really follow UFC, but came across this nice article on Georges St Pierre (since then I've watched a few of his fights, very impressive - looking forward to his one with Nick Diaz).

""In fighting, in evolution, in life, efficiency is the key," says St-Pierre, who hopes to one day return to school to study paleontology. "It's not the most powerful animal that survives. It's the most efficient."

"There is a difference between a fighter and a martial artist," St-Pierre says. "A fighter is training for a purpose: He has a fight. I'm a martial artist. I don't train for a fight. I train for myself. I'm training all the time. My goal is perfection. But I will never reach perfection."Understandably, St-Pierre's goals are lofty—and prioritized. For later: He wants to marry and have five kids. For now: He's 29, single, aiming to become the best pound-for-pound mixed martial artist of all time, the man who is crescent-kicking a fringe sport into the mainstream. Too bold? No. "The danger is not to set your goal too high and fail to reach it," St-Pierre says, now channeling Michelangelo."It's to set your goal too low and reach it."ST-PIERRE'S FIRST FIGHT TOOK PLACE at around age 7. He reached the top of the hill during a schoolyard game, and an older kid punched him in the nose. More hits would come during his childhood in Saint-Isidore, a parish just outside Montreal, population 2,500. "I was bullied," says St-Pierre, once a nerdy, studious boy who competed in chess tournaments. "I was not very popular."To protect himself, he learned Kyokushin karate from his father. That gave him the striking base he still uses today, he says. He discovered the importance of looking up to other experts when at 15 he watched Royce Gracie, a skinny Brazilian jujitsu master, tap out oversize foes in the early days of the UFC. "I asked myself, 'How can this happen? How can this small guy beat all these monsters?' " he says... "Because of the knowledge," he says, "that every war is won by the strongest weapon. Royce Gracie had the knowledge. The next day I started looking for a trainer."http://www.menshealth.com/celebrity-fitness/georges-st-pierre

***I have a heard time watching the UFC/boxing/hockey fights without thinking about how these guys are fu@*%$# up their brains.***

True. GSP seems a reasonably thoughtful character.

"In fighting, in evolution, in life, efficiency is the key," says St-Pierre, who hopes to one day return to school to study paleontology. "It's not the most powerful animal that survives. It's the most efficient."..

"There is a difference between a fighter and a martial artist," St-Pierre says. "A fighter is training for a purpose: He has a fight. I'm a martial artist. I don't train for a fight. I train for myself. I'm training all the time. My goal is perfection. But I will never reach perfection."...

ST-PIERRE'S FIRST FIGHT TOOK PLACE at around age 7. He reached the top of the hill during a schoolyard game, and an older kid punched him in the nose. More hits would come during his childhood in Saint-Isidore, a parish just outside Montreal, population 2,500. "I was bullied," says St-Pierre, once a nerdy, studious boy who competed in chess tournaments. "I was not very popular."

To protect himself, he learned Kyokushin karate from his father. That gave him the striking base he still uses today, he says. He discovered the importance of looking up to other experts when at 15 he watched Royce Gracie, a skinny Brazilian jujitsu master, tap out oversize foes in the early days of the UFC. "I asked myself, 'How can this happen? How can this small guy beat all these monsters?' " he says.

And now St-Pierre has the answer.

"Because of the knowledge," he says, "that every war is won by the strongest weapon. Royce Gracie had the knowledge. The next day I started looking for a trainer."

With the gi this is really dangerous. If you get a straight armbar (juji gatame) on with full power using the gi you can easily snap someone's elbow before they can tap. Happened to me once -- months of rehab :-(